The University of Texas at San Antonio Minority Basic Research Support for Continuous Research Excellence (MBRS/SCORE) program has been awarded a five-year, $9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The funding will support 10 faculty research projects in a variety of disciplines.

MBRS/SCORE was established to increase the participation of individuals from minority or underrepresented groups in scientific research. UTSA’s involvement in the MBRS/SCORE program began in 1981 and has grown over the years as more faculty members pursue biomedical research projects.

“This grant will help serve as another building block in UTSA’s efforts to achieve premier public research university status,” said Robert Gracy, UTSA vice president of research. “It also reinforces UTSA’s reputation as a national leader in educating underrepresented minorities in the sciences and in the recruitment and promotion of UTSA faculty researchers.”

UTSA’s MBRS/SCORE newly funded projects include researching how the brain understands and comprehends languages spoken by bilingual individuals, developing effective means to prevent the transmission of Lyme disease and using cutting-edge computational biology databases to predict genetic systems in malaria carrying parasites.

Janakarim Seshu, assistant professor of biology, was awarded $1.4 million to identify how Borrelia burgdorferis, the cause of Lyme disease, interacts with mammalian hosts cells.

Yufeng Wang, assistant professor of biology, will receive $1.2 million to use a computational biology approach to predict dynamics in systems of genes working in malaria parasites. Malaria is a global problem that claims two million lives annually and affects 500 million people worldwide.

The MBRS/SCORE program develops the biomedical research capability of faculty to increase the number of minorities actively engaged in biomedical research.

The National Institutes of Health support to UTSA College of Sciences faculty members involved with the MBRS/SCORE program has increased to more than $32 million over the years.